 I'm Koei Lucas and this is Hawaii is my mainland every Friday at 3pm, right here on Think Tech. This week I have a guest from the world of theater, although he's probably at least as well known in the world of law, but in this case the theater piece was about law practice. My guest is local attorney Ron Heller who made a spectacular directorial debut recently at Tag Theater with Disgraced, the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Ayad Akhtar. Welcome Ron. Thank you. So, I didn't do any homework before seeing the show and so walked in and it's a nice, you know, a domestic kind of drama scene building and then wow it just exploded all over the place and at the end of the show had no intermission, right? How long was the show? Just under 90 minutes. Just under 90 minutes and it was, it was a workout, it was an emotional workout being in the audience. It was like, thank god I'm not married, no I'm sorry, but it was really powerful. So, amazing job for your first time out of the gates directing, but you've been involved in theater a long time. Yes, more than 40 years ago when I started back in college. So, why directing all of a sudden at this point? It's just the next step for me, I've been doing a lot of acting, I've done almost everything else there is in theater, working backstage, I've done, you know, lights, costumes, sets, all those kinds of things, but directing was something I haven't done yet and I wanted to try. So how did you, how did you go, how did this piece find you or do you find this piece or how did it happen that this really stunning work that's not a simple thing ended up being your first production? Well the way it works at TAG is generally a director goes to the board at TAG and suggests a show and I did that. It wasn't this show actually, I suggested something else and they said, well we kind of like it, but it doesn't really fit into our season and they asked me to read a couple other things and I actually read another show or two first and just wasn't all that excited by those scripts and then Brad Powell, the artistic director at TAG said, have you looked at This Grace and I said no I haven't but he said well go read it and I did and as soon as I read it I said yes I've got to do this show. And why? It just grabbed me because it's such a powerful script, it's well written, it's intense, it's very contemporary, I mean it deals with the issues of being Muslim in America today, which obviously is something that's all over the headlines right now so it's very relevant but at the same time it's a Pulitzer Prize winning play, I mean it's a well written script, it's a good piece of work to do and so as soon as I read it I was just hooked on it. Well I wasn't the only one that loved it, you got some excellent reviews which is you know not the main thing but it's nice to have the Star Bulletin came out and talked about it and I thought they did a pretty good write-up about having some context about it and if people were moved to motivate people to go and see it somehow I don't know if it's available online but you could at least get a copy of the script if someone wanted to read it. Sure, you can buy the script on Amazon or whatever. And did you say that the playwright has written up that this was based on a book or? Not really based on a book, he wrote a novel before this and the novel was not really autobiographical but kind of related to his own life in the sense of growing up in a Muslim family although it was a secular Muslim family and he kind of took some of that background from the novel and it ended up in the play it's I mean it's two different stories it's not just taking the novel and making it into a play but a lot of the same concepts came up a lot of the same ideas are dealt with. So let's you've you've edited out for me very nicely a little a little clip from from the show let's have a look at the video and so the viewers have a sense of what we're talking about when we're talking about drama. The gauntlet of attorneys struck a defiant tone and then she quotes an attorney me implying that I'm one of the gauntlet of attorneys. She doesn't quote another attorney. But she says you're just supporting him. She adjusts. There's no just supporting him. You know I picked up the recipe on a Fulbright in Seville. Oh I love Spain. I ran with the bulls in Pamplona. You did not run with the bulls. I watched people run the bulls. It was thrilling. Let's talk about something that is in the text. Wife beating. Wife beating. So the angel Gabriel comes to Mohammed. Angel Gabriel? Yeah that's how Muslims believe the Quran came to humanity. Angel Gabriel supposedly dictated to Mohammed word word. Oh like Joseph Smith. Mormonism. They say that an angel named Mirami came down in upstate New York and spoke to Joseph Smith. Mirami honey not Mirami. It was on South Park. Politics follows faith. No distinction between mosque and state. Remember all that? So if the point is that the world and the Quran was a better place than this world. Well then, let's go back. Let's stone adulterers. Let's cut off the hands of thieves. Let's kill the unbelievers. I am so disgusted with myself. God if I could take it back. The FBI asked you to work with them. What would you do? You are not there yet. There are ways to let the authorities know that you're on their side. I'm not on their side. I had a part in what happened. And no. It's true. I was selfish and my work, it made me blind. I just want you to be proud of me. Amir stop. I want you to be proud. Anymore. That's so much material, so rich. What was it like to bring that diversity of really strong... I mean how did you get the actors to do what they did so beautifully? Well first of all I had a great group of people to work with and I was really lucky to be able to find and assemble the cast that I had. Tell us who played who. Troy Apostle was Amir. Courtney Costin as Emily. Victoria Brown Wilson as Jory. Max Holtz as Isaac. And Noah Fa'almina as A. And like I said all of them were great. I was really lucky to assemble that group. We spent a lot of time at the beginning working with the text. Before we even really started mapping out the moves on the stage and everything and we spent time just around the table reading the script and talking about what does it mean and where are these references coming from and what is he really talking about when he says this. Going into a lot of detail about some of the background. For example there's a mention of the mosque at Cordoba. So we looked up the mosque at Cordoba and found pictures of it and looked at those and researched what does it mean and why is it being used as a symbol in this particular case. And why is it? In that particular case that mosque is actually a very famous mosque. It was for a long time the second largest mosque in the world. And it's unique in that on the same site, the same actual physical site, there are both a mosque and a cathedral. And for centuries it was shared between the Catholics using the cathedral and the Muslims using the mosque. And so that cathedral is both a symbol of Christian-Muslim cooperation and unfortunately at present a symbol of Christian-Muslim tension because right now the property is owned by the diocese of Cordoba and they are not allowing the Muslims to use the mosque as an active operating mosque. So now there's tension about it in terms of the property being used by one religion but not the other. So that same mosque is both a symbol of when the two religions were coexisting and cooperating and a symbol of the tension that exists today. And it's not an accident that the playwright picked that mosque to refer to. Clearly not and thanks for giving that. Watching the clips now, now that I know what happens later in the play, I want to go back and read it because there were so many lines that reverberate into the action later on that sort of what seemed like a flippant remark about, oh, let's talk about what's really in the Quran, wife-beating and then not knowing how that came in. I was sort of wondering if I could look around and see people going through PTSD at that moment in the theater. It was quite, it was electric. That was really, really well done. They managed to create quite a bit of impact in that. How was that with the rehearsals and going through what must have been pretty tough? Well, it was intense in rehearsal too. I had friends who afterwards said that there were moments during the play when they felt almost like they wanted to look away. They couldn't watch it because it was so hard to watch. But that's part of what we were actually trying to do is to make it that intense. Obviously, for example, the moment when Amir attacks Emily, that's a tough thing to watch. I kind of flinch myself sometimes just looking at it. But at the same time, it's illustrating the whole point of the play, which is their inability to coexist peacefully to understand each other and to actually work around or work through the differences that they have. That's one of the main themes in the play, that's what it's all about. So you have to confront that, but that doesn't necessarily make it easy to confront. Right. Did the actors do any kind of special studies around the themes and the culture? Well, they all did a lot of reading. In fact, it surprised me to the extent that some of them actually went out and looked things up on their own and did a lot of reading and studying. And then I tried to bring things in when we were doing all that table work at the beginning of rehearsal. We talked about things like, okay, when they're talking about the Quran in this scene, are they accurately saying what's really in the Quran or are they distorting what's really in the Quran? And we tried to be aware of those kinds of things as we were working our way through it. Do you have some sort of a local expert to refer to? Did you have anybody helping you out with the nuances of Islam? Not with the nuances of Islam. I pretty much attempted to do that on my own. I actually read the Quran. Well, it's pretty going straight to the source. And I got some books on tape dealing with Islam and the background of Islamic architecture and Islamic art and all those kinds of things. Well, let's talk about how that art and architecture fit into the story when we come back from a short break. Sure. This guy looked familiar. He calls himself the Ultra Fan, but that doesn't explain all this. Why? Why? He planned this party, planned the snacks, even planned to coordinate colored shirts, but he didn't plan to have a good time. Now you wouldn't do this in your own house, so don't do it in your team's house. Know your limits and plan ahead so that everyone can have a good time. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kaui Lucas. My guest today is Ron Heller, the director of Disgraced, which was recently performed at the Tag Theater. Ron tells us where the Tag Theater is for those unenlightened, poor, starving, culturally starving folks who haven't yet discovered it. It's in the Dole Canary Building, which is right across the street from the Dole movie theaters. Yeah. So at ground level, right across from the theaters, it's just on the Makai side of that building that's on the other side of Iwale Street. Right. Yeah. It's a great little theater. Lots of parking. Yeah, you can park in the Costco a lot on the other side, so there's plenty of space. Yeah. Free space. We like that. Tag validates if you park in the movie parking structure. Oh, good to know. Okay. I admit that this was only the second production I've been doing at Tag, but really a great space. Really great. It's intimate, but I don't know. What did you think as a director? Well, I've done a number of shows with Tag in the past, and it's a nice small theater, about 65 seats, so obviously not a huge space. You can't get a big cast or a big show in there, but you can do a lot of good things. Yeah, so back to the theme of disgraced and prejudice. Well, what are the themes of disgraced? And there's, it's so layered in. Talk about the characters and their various juxtapositions with prejudice. And we have Iranian, I'm sorry. Pakistani. Amir is Pakistani. He's an attorney. And very focused on professional success. I mean, his goal is to become a partner in the law firm where he works. And his main focus, his central goal, is professional success to be recognized, to be respected, to be admired. I mean, he really needs the approval of other people. And he is so focused on his profession that, in fact, in the scene where Emily, his wife, is accused of having an affair with Isaac. And then Jory, who is the accuser, says, by the way, Mort, the senior partner in the law firm, is not returning your phone calls, is he? The first thing that Amir does is obsess about the fact that Mort's not returning his phone calls. He goes immediately to thinking about what's going on at the office and how does it affect my prospects of making partner and what does this mean in terms of the law firm and my prospects there. And after that, after thinking about all this stuff at work, then he turns to the question of, gee, is my wife actually having an affair? And I think that tells us a lot about his character, that the first thing that he worries about is my wife having an affair. The first thing he worries about is, am I in trouble at the office? So his wife is also ambitious, though, right? Yes, she's an artist and focused on Islamic art, which is another one of the big things in the show. You can see the Islamic tile pattern. That was a painting that we had on the set, which, by the way, is based on real Islamic tile patterns. There is an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London that has hundreds of years' worth of Islamic art, and in particular, there's one particular tile pattern from the 13th century that was the basis of that painting. It's not copied exactly, but the shapes and the colors and everything are all based on real 13th century Islamic patterns. Okay, and I was wondering, was that sort of trompe l'oeil? I don't know whether it's on... the distortion that makes it look convex or concave. Is that supposed to look... Is it on a dome, or was that just... It's supposed to look like a curving of the surface, and there's a reference in the show, a line that says it's tending toward the convex. The way that was actually done is my wife who did the painting. Yay, Rachel! Yes, thank you, Rachel. Yeah, it was a labor of love. We're talking about this, this is actually a painting here, and wow, that's a lot of detail. It took a tremendous amount of effort, too. I mean, I know I saw her working on it every day, but she got that effect, and then very meticulously painted in each and every one of those tiles, and put in all the designs and so on. Okay, and in the show, Emily is an aspiring artist... Right, who has painted this painting, and there's a scene where she shows it to Isaac, who is a curator at the Whitney Museum, and he likes this painting and goes to see some of her other work and likes that, too, and decides to do a show at the Whitney, featuring her among several other artists. And there's a whole lot of discussion about that in the show, and it's a big deal for her that she's going to be in a show at the Whitney. I mean, that's a huge success for any artist. I mean, the Whitney is obviously a major thing, and to be in a show there means she's kind of made it. So it's a big deal for her, but at the same time, the night that Isaac and Jory are coming over to basically tell her that she's going to be in the show, Amir has had a bad day at the office, and that scene starts with Amir drinking alone in a bad mood, and then Emily walks in, reminds him that Isaac and Jory are coming over, which he had forgotten. I mean, this is a big deal for her, and he had forgotten it, right? And then the scene kind of develops from there, and that turns into the dinner party when Amir and Isaac have a big confrontation, and then Jory kind of yells at him and stomps out, and everything goes downhill for him in that dinner. And that very vulnerable, tender moment he has, or tender in a sort of bleeding way, at the end was in that clip of him coming to terms with what he really wanted, that Emily was thinking highly of him, and that he's lost all of that. That, I thought, was a very interesting moment in theater, because so often when we're dealing with subjects like creditists, or there's this desire to have sort of the noble savage, I'm sorry to gloss over it that way, but just to have them, the downtrodden person, or the minority person, be more heroic. And what I thought was really interesting was that this play really got to that super vulnerable little core moment for him. And for her. And for her. I mean, there are no heroes. Right, okay. Nobody in the show comes out as a real hero. Everybody shows their flaws, shows their downside, so to speak. I mean, everybody has their good moments, but these are characters who are real, who are human, and that means they have good parts and bad parts. And we see that in each and every one of the characters at various times. Now, the scene you're talking about is kind of the final parting of Amir and Emily. And he in that scene says, I'm so sorry for what happened. He knows he was wrong when he hit her. He knows he caused a lot of the problems in the relationship. But then she comes back and says, well, I had a part in what happened too. It was partly my fault, because my work, my ambition, my concentration on my art, I was so focused on that that I didn't even realize what this was doing to you. And so she admits that she is also at fault. I thought that was another beautiful thing. Also, unusual. We tend to make these monochromatic heroes out of the victims. And again, that didn't happen here. She owned her part to it, which in no way excused what he did, but she was able to say, well, I'm not holier than thou. I think that's one of the things that makes it such a good play, is that the characters are very real. And real people are not all good or all bad. I mean, real people are a combination. Everybody's got some good points and everybody's got some bad points. And we see that in the play. So we haven't talked about the relationship of the young man, Amir's nephew. Can you talk about that? Because I thought that, especially sort of in the global, what we're dealing with globally, was a very interesting, skillful way to talk about that subject. Sure. And I think what happens to Abe is a real commentary on what's going on socially and politically in our country. Because Abe starts out as kind of the typical college kid. I mean, he's Muslim, but he's not really that actively religious. He's not that serious about it. He's more of a typical, let's have fun kind of college guy. Wearing a t-shirt and yeah. Kind of guy who likes to go hang out with his friends and have a good time. And then by the end of the show, we get the sense that he's turning into something much more of a radical Islamic militant, I guess you could say, that he's taking on attitudes that we would view as almost dangerous. But we can see that he's been pushed there by the way he's been treated. It's not that he wanted to become that way. It's that the way he was treated in our country and the way he was treated by the legal system in particular, by the FBI, has pushed him to fight back. And you can understand and almost not blame him for where he's going because the way he was treated is the reason for where he's going. That really was, I felt the most important message in the whole thing to finally to have a space where we're already been tenderized by all of this other stuff. But then to have that so poignantly pushed up, he wanted to be a happy American teenager, but he was not allowed to be. Right. So just in the last few seconds here, Ron, what's next for you? Do you know? Well, in terms of directing, I don't know yet what's next. In terms of acting, I'm going to be working with the Hawaii Shakespeare Festival in their upcoming check-off play, The Seagull. Oh, and where is that going to be? The Arts at Mark's Garage. Going to be in August. So we're just about to start rehearsal next week. Well, thank you so much for taking time from both your passion and your profession to come down and talk here at Think Tech. Aloha. Aloha. Thanks for asking me.